“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” -Joseph Campbell

It took Charles Messier and his assistant, Pierre Méchain, a lifetime to scan and survey the sky for all the permanent deep-sky objects visible in their telescopes that could possibly be confused for comets on first class. More than 200 years later, these 110 deep-sky objects are among the best seen and most wondrous sights of the Universe, accessible to anyone with a decent telescope and dark skies. This Messier Monday, let’s look the farthest into the Universe that the Messier catalogue can take us!

The next-to-last addition to the Messier catalogue, Messier 109, is both one of the easiest objects to locate — as in, the sky makes it easy to know where it should be — and yet one of the most difficult objects to actually see with your own eyes! How are both of these things paradoxically true? Just locate the Big Dipper, visible over the northern horizon after sunset, and you’ll understand.

The familiar pattern of seven stars to northern hemisphere observers consists of three very bright stars in the handle, three more very bright ones in the bowl, and they’re linked together by a significantly dimmer one that connects them. The lower-left star in the bowl, Phad, is bright, blue, young and hot, and lies only about half-a-degree away from today’s target: M109.

You normally think of city lights or the Moon as major sources of light pollution, but when you’ve got a distant galaxy with a low surface-brightness as seen from Earth less than a single degree away from one of the 100 brightest stars in the sky (Phad is #86), your best bet, if you want to actually see it, is to locate Phad and then move your optics so that the star is out-of-frame, otherwise it’ll be in danger of washing out the galaxy you’re seeking — Messier 109 — which is more than seven magnitudes dimmer!

When Méchain wrote about the Owl Nebula (M97) in a letter to Bernoulli, he also mentioned two other nearby nebulae:

When reporting its position, Mr. Messier speaks of two others which I also have discovered, the one close to this one [M108], & the other close to Gamma [Ursae Majoris; M109].

But the position that Messier recorded of M109 — the right ascension and declination (astronomical equivalents of longitude and latitude) — is a little bizarre. While the declination corresponds precisely to the position of M109 (also known as NGC 3992), the right ascension actually corresponds to the “copycat” galaxy NGC 3953. A further review suggests that Méchain actually discovered the latter, and that Messier himself was the first to discover M109 itself!

But moving beyond the historical era and into the modern age, what exactly are we looking at when we consider the next-to-last addition to the Messier catalogue?

Image credit: NOAO / AURA / NSF.

This barred spiral galaxy with apparently five separate grand, sweeping arms appears tiny for a galactic Messier object in the night sky: it measures just 7.6′ by 4.7′, where an arcminute is just one sixtieth of a degree. (1° = 60′.)

But there’s a difference between angular size and physical size! Even though M109 takes up a very small region of the sky, it’s incredibly far away, and it turns out to actually be physically larger than our own Milky Way!

We can take a good look at this galaxy in the infrared, thanks to IPAC, or NASA’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, which shows off the warm dust in the galactic disk which will form new stars, as well as highlighting the cooler, redder stars in our own galactic foreground that frame this cosmic beauty.

Image credit: IPAC, NASA and JPL-Caltech.

There is a Hubble image available, although it’s a bit older (19 years old) and a relatively short-duration exposure compared to what you’re likely used to. Nevertheless, it gives an intriguing view of the core of this galaxy!

And finally, the most spectacular view I’ve encountered of the entire galaxy comes courtesy of Bob Franke, who (in full resolution) shows off not only Messier 109 — which may prove to be the most distant of all the Messier objects — but three of its satellite galaxies in a left-to-right row: UGCs 6969, 6940, and 6923.

Receding away from us — like nearly all external galaxies — at more than 1,000 km/s, Messier 109 will only grow more and more distant from our own galaxy as the Universe evolves. But this Messier Monday, enjoy the spectacular view of this distant, glorious object, if you can see it for yourself through the glare of its incredibly nearby bright star! Including today’s entry, we’ve taken a look at the following Messier objects:

Comments

Just locate the Big Dipper, visible over the northern horizon after sunset, and you’ll understand.

A bit tough from Adelaide, South Australia, – sadly the bulk of the Earth gets in the way and we can’t see the Big Dipper from here ever. We’re too far south. Mind you we do get the circumpolar from here Magellanic clouds, Omega Centauri, Southern Cross etc .. so guess we can’t complain too much.

Same deal from Newcastle, StevoR. Although I have seen Phad sneaking up about 1 degree above the northern horizon lol… but atmospheric extinction at that low altitude ruins any chance of seeing this galaxy.

After the Messier Mondays have finished, Ethan should keep it going with some southern not-a-comet objects